Tag Archives: creativity

Writing, Visions and Story

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Our dreams are often eclipsed by what we assume is the life we’re supposed have rather than life we actually have.

Our actuality is different from the way we see the world, the way we read the world and the way we write the world.

Our writing describes the way we see the things around us. The river we fished as kids, the smell of the smoke in morning when the farmers would burn weeds and the way our grandparents house always smelled of fresh cookies regardless of whether there were actual cookies available.

These words are the way we see the laughable things we see in the painting before us. The way the light hits the top of trees outside our house, the way the dirt smells when we’re planting the garden and how things we see may be differ from the way others see it.

Each day we write and engage the world around us informs our thoughts about our writing and whether we trust that our writing is on the correct track and not being disturbed by the things we don’t see around us, like the negative thoughts running through our heads.

Our negative thoughts about our writing should be silenced when we finish a new book, but they often get louder.

We chase our writing, when it should be trying to keep up with what we want to write and not us keeping up with the story coming out.

Keeping up with the words is our motivation, and it’s a worthy one.

Six Things I’ve Done to Create my Dream Reality.

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We venture in to the world, our hearts full of dreams, our minds full of doubts, but there’s always that one dream.

The one we have that pushes us to go farther, try harder and not accept anything other than the dream as our reality.

These dreams make us question who we are, what we truly want out of our lives, whether we want to continue on our current path and the decisions we must make to create the dream as our reality.

One year ago I began searching for who I was and discovered him in the dreams I was having, and continue to have.

He was stronger, more disciplined, more loving of his family, helped people in need and he was a writer.

There are things I’ve done in the last year to be that person.

  1. I spend more time with my family than I ever have.
  2. I started keeping track of things I’ve done during the day to make myself and those around me better people.
  3. I made a list of where I wanted to be in 10 years and started working towards it.
  4. I realized how much I truly loved my wife and began to prove to her I’d changed.
  5. I knew what I wanted to write and started creating the world for my characters.
  6. I stopped listening to the haters and began listening to like-minded people who wanted to change their world and help others.

Each of these 6 things have changed the way I think about who I am, what I do with my life on a daily basis, but that dream I had, well…it’s one of those you wake up from stare at the world around us and know that you can change things.

Change brings about angst and fear, but by meeting fear head on we’re able to create the world we want for ourselves our partners and those around us.

Breaking the Limits Of Who We Are.

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We inspire, create and live by a set of limits placed upon us by those around us.

These limits define who we are, what we do and how we live.

When we get past these limits and realize we were taught wrong, it disrupts the life we had and can send us over the edge.

The most curious thing about TM is discovering things about myself I’ve believed since I was child. Things I was told by parents, teachers and school guidance counselors have turned out to be false.

I was told I couldn’t do something based on my grades, where I grew up or what I believed.

A few weeks after beginning TM, I had a revelation about my life and the limits I’d been taught.

This made me think about who I was and afterward I knew I’d discovered who I was and what I wanted out of life and it had nothing to do with the beliefs of those I’d been surrounded with as a youth.

I saw in those early weeks of TM my future self and where I wanted my life to go.

Our life is set by the limits of what we’re told, what we’re taught, but when we discover the falsehood of those limits and begin to understand there are no limits, it sets us free and helps us discover a part of ourselves we never believed could exist.

This part knows no limits, it accepts nothing but the absence of limits and when we choose to follow it, we’ll understand limits are placed to protect us from failure, but the greatest gift is to fail.

It’s only in failure we truly learn the mistakes we’d made and with learning we see the reason behind the failure and change things to never make the same mistake again.

Our life is short, but living without the limits placed upon us is the way to truly understand ourselves and our life’s failures.

When I saw the limits placed upon me, I knew something had to change and I’m beginning the changes.

The first was last week. By moving the blog to once a week I’m able to focus my energy to other things and break the limits of trying to complete two posts and maintain my other responsibilities.

In the next few weeks there will be minor things changed, but they will be negligible.

For next week I plan on having my wife—who’s been doing TM for a couple weeks already—write a post on the blog.

I’ll be doing other things with other types of media and will keep things going on the blog, but the posts will stay at once a week.

2014: Transcendental Meditation and Healing my Soul

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We talk about life-changing moments, but until they happen we’re not truly sure until after the fact.

This past year I said goodbye to my wonderful dog Abbey, held my wife the morning her father died and discovered who I am.

Abbey was with me through my migraine sessions, always laying next to me until they subsided. My father-in-law was one of the most creative, imaginative and caring men I’ve ever met.

Both of these changed who I am, but it was the 20 minutes I took twice a day which healed my soul and saved me from suicide and depression.

My life up until this year felt as though it were a series of mishaps leading me toward the end of my life. By the end of 2013 I felt I’d lived my last full year and would not live through another year.

When I walked in to the TM center in Las Vegas, I discovered that there were others who had dealt with depression, addiction, and stress in the same ways I had.

They’d taken the pills the doctor prescribed, they’d had their share of being “on the wagon.” None of them felt better until they’d tried TM.

Now, I’m the one touting its effectiveness and leading others to learn the technique.

In the next few weeks my wife will be learning the technique. She’s had her father pass away, dealt with depression and bi-polar disorder. But I know TM will work for her. In the next year there will be a few changes on the blog to reflect my involvement with TM and I hope you’ll talk to a teacher or read David Lynch’s book.

2014 and Transcendental Meditation changed my soul. It made me want to live for myself. It made me want to be a better father, husband, son and human. I care more about the lives around me, though they may not know I’m there, I want them to be at peace with who they are, where they’ve been and the life they have.

TM put my soul to rest about my childhood, my parents divorce and the problems I’d had with my father. I love him, and always will, but I know that we’re different people than we were before and there’s a separation between us that will never be healed. I hope he has a good life, enjoys himself and finds TM and begins to learn.

We’re all going through life learning about who we are, but I feel TM makes us understand who we are and embrace that person and not care about the rest.

Happy New Year and I hope you have peaceful 2015.

Brian

 

Why I Rethought The Way I Look at My Writing.

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Each day we’re stuck living someone else’s dream.

We go to a job where oftentimes, we’re creating something for someone else, because it pays the bills.

What if we decided to live our dream, pay the bills and still keep people happy?

This was something I thought about the other day when I was writing.

I work a day job, which I had considered my main job, obviously neglecting my writing and anything creative in the process.

That was until this past week, when I was struck with something, I’m not a writer. I’m pretending to be a writer.

What I realized in that “moment of clarity” is that I’ve been looking at my writing as a second job, sure it doesn’t pay the bills right now, but as long as I treat my writing as the second job and not the first, it will always suffer.

In this realization I thought, “Damn, if I think this way, others do as well.”

What do we do about it?

We rethink our creative side, redo the way we look at our day and come up with ways to put our creative efforts first, and other things second.

I say this as a husband and father, “If your creative side isn’t in first place, it will never win.”

I have obligations, it’s not like I’m going to quit my day job, not right now. I see the time coming when that will happen, but it’s not right now.

The thing is, we all have things we want to do, but we put them in second place out of fear, shame or other reasons.

Fear of rejection, fear of someone not understanding and the fear of failure. And shame, damn, shame is the worst. When we look at the things we’ve failed at there could be a big list, and because we failed at those the shame and fear of it happening again makes us not want to try, not want to do it again.

But, when we come to the realization, as I did, that what we wake up for in the morning should be first. That the thing we want to do most in our life should be first, then, and only then will we discover the will to do it.

I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be hard. There will be people who say you can’t do it, there will be that damn voice in your head and when the voice in your head talks, tell it to F off.

The only way you’re going to do what you want with your life is to put your creative pursuits first and anything else second.

We live someone else’s dream every day, isn’t it about time we live our dream?